First of all – I’d like to say it’s really exciting to see people subscribing to this site. Thanks everyone for following along with my adventures!
So getting to the meat of the post…one of the biggest issues I’ve been facing is focus. What should I prioritize? How do I know I’m going down the right path?
With my thoughts scrambled all over the place, I spoke with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income and Marcus from Cash Flow Startup for advice. Pat was amazing enough to provide his e-mail and number for me to contact in case I had any questions. And Marcus gave some really sound, actionable pieces of advice for figuring out one’s life direction.
Here were my takeaways from the conversation:
How to Focus
Let me back up here and talk about why I’m in such a predicament when it comes to FOCUS. Here’s the thing about me.
I’ve figured out that I like to:
1. Take calculated risks. I am not okay with jumping into an idea that requires dropping all of my savings.
2. Create – whether that be writing songs or building small income streams or bootstrapping businesses.
3. Live life – Life is too short not to.
I also figured out that I DON’T like to:
1. Work for other people. I have no motivation to up my efforts at a day job when it merely entails helping someone else make more money.
2. Stay in a mundane routine, doing and seeing the same things every day. Life is too short for that shit.
From examining my specific interests and goals, I can see why I’ve been indulging myself in tons of different side projects. I’ve been dreaming about the future. I’ve been hoping to achieve passive income streams. But also I’ve been wanting to write more music. And I’ve been having trouble figuring out how to balance building a longer lasting authority/expertise versus taking on shorter term side hustles for money. So I’m wondering – should I write more music? Should I try Amazon FBA? Should I write kindle books? Should I take on more freelancing gigs? Should I work on a bigger business idea?
I’m juggling. A lot.
This is where the focus question really comes in. How do I know if I’m going down the right path?
By thinking through Marcus’s pieces of advice, I’m starting to really figure out my timeline. Here were his nuggets of knowledge I’d like to pass on to you.
1. Assess Your Situation
What does this mean?
It means you should write down:
1. Your long term goals.
2. Your financial situation.
3. Your unique strengths.
I’m going to dive deeper into this with the next few points.
2. Think Long Term
Marcus told me that the more they pursued online marketing and bootstrapped startup ideas, the more they realized long term value was crucial to figuring out what business idea to pursue. In most cases, you should expect to commit at least 6 months to 1 year on a project to get some form of traction.
This means that you should think long term for your goals and figure out where you see yourself in 5-10 years.
This will help you figure out what steps you need to take and in what order.
3. Look at Success Stories and/or Find Mentors
If you’re having trouble with step 2, take a look at people who inspire you. Talk to them or read their entire life stories, and reverse engineer from there.
This has really helped me in figuring out my path and timeline because let’s face it. Doing everything alone is TOUGH. You could spend months or even years trying to figure out that one answer that could speed up your progress and make things a whole lot easier. OR you can drop your pride a little and ask for help.
Reading more about people’s stories also lets you understand just what it takes to get to a certain success level. Most likely, you’ll understand that it takes persistence, hardships, failures, etc. When I talk about this I always think about my freakin’ HERO – J.K. Rowling. She moved to a foreign country, divorced her abusive husband, lived off child support, worked on a book for 6+ years without showing her work to anyone, but believed in herself enough that through the strife she pushed hard and succeeded. It takes a crapload of hard work and faith to pull that off.
4. Understand Your Financial Situation
Looking at your financial situation will help filter out ideas and determine the way to go when deciding upon an idea.
Marcus said, if you needed money immediately you should double down on freelancing because service businesses are a fast way to make money. And in the future, it’s also possible to productize these types of services.
If you DON’T urgently need money at the moment, you could explore more long term opportunities. An easy and safe way to generate cashflow fast is to take something that’s selling already and sell it better. If income is your goal, don’t reinvent the wheel or go after disruption.
5. Self Reflect on Your Strengths
Marcus recommended two books: “Turning Your Talent into Income” by Eben Pagans. Or “Managing Oneself” by Peter Druckers to get some insight on how to reflect on your strengths.
But he provided this amazing idea:
Imagine there are four circles that overlap each other like a 4-part venn diagram. Each circle has a question associated with it:
1. What did you grow up around?
2. What is your stranger feedback? (What do strangers or loose unbiased acquaintances think are your strengths?”
3. What have you been doing for the last 10 years and gaining experience in?
4. What can you talk about effortlessly on a Saturday night with your friends?
Finding the overlap between these four will help you figure out the sweet spot that contain your unique strengths and passions.
Applying these Practices
These concepts helped me SO much. Here are the things I’m interested in and currently juggling: music, freelancing (marketing & graphic design), kindle books, Etsy, fulltime job (ending that soon hopefully), Amazon FBA, living abroad, and blogging. And this is how I applied Marcus’s advice to my own situation:
- Where do I see myself in 5-10 years? I hope to be financially free by 5 years – AKA I will earn enough passive income in which I don’t need to worry about taking on a fulltime job. I hope to accumulate rental properties around the world. I hope to be in a state where I can make music freely without worrying about money. And I hope to ultimately create a bigger business to help something I care about. I also want to have traveled near and far: seeing the rich and the poor, learning about different perspectives, and figuring out how I can make an impact. (And I guess it would also be nice to be in a stable relationship by that time as well…)
- Financial situation? I have enough liquid assets (not including investments) to cover me for at least 3 years of unemployment. Liquidating my investments = I can last for a pretty good amount of time. Plus my parents don’t even want me to leave home – they’d be happy if I lived with them until I were 100. So luckily for me, there isn’t much to worry about. However, I just have anxiety when I’m not continuously collecting assets and savings (which is something I need to overcome).
- My strengths (the answer to those 4 questions in point 5) This was a bit tough but I’m going to try my best to tackle these questions:
- What did you grow up around? To sum it up…music, video games, and chess. Something I noticed about myself though is I always liked to hustle. I would even hustle in video games. I would buy and resell sell things on Neopets, and I would trade constantly on Diablo 2. I know. I’m weird. And I would thoroughly enjoy games that entailed building an empire – like Red Alert 2. I can see how this correlates with my current dreams of financial independence and creating.
- Stranger feedback? People think I’m social because of my music and because I guess I’m pretty fun when I’m out drinking lol (I like to dance). They also compliment my music and singing. Most people would say I’m productive, hard-working, good at handling projects, creative, and passionate.
- What have you been doing for the last 10 years? To sum it up – music for around 20 years, marketing for 6 years, entrepreneurship/online business/digital nomad research for around 1-2 years. But I was always intrigued with the idea of being my own boss and making money work for me.
- What can you talk about effortlessly? Well I wanted to say music, but I would say entrepreneurship/passive income/digital nomad life would be my #1. Life talks are huge in my book as well.
So where is the overlap? I could easily say music, but when examined more closely it looks like my overlap is really around this financial freedom & hustling aspect.
Based on everything, this makes me think that my timeline should be:
Financial Freedom/Digital Nomad Life -> Real Estate Investment/Music -> Create a Business
This is what I’m going to focus on now, but who knows what’s going to happen! I’m going to use this as a guideline, and tweak continuously as I go down this route. Like people say…fail fast!
